“What can I do, sir?”
Hickman shrugged his shoulders and leaned forward in the chair, his elbows resting on his knees, his chin resting on folded hands. She had never seen this contemplative version of him. She resisted the urge to lean inward. People did that, you know, mimicking each other’s moves in a conversation.
Hickman settled back in his chair, his forearms resting on the arms of the chair. “I suppose they’ll have to honor his request, within reason. But this isn’t our biggest problem.”
She waited. Hickman leaned forward again. This time, she couldn’t resist the accommodation. It would have been unwise to do so a second time.
“He’s poking around, asking about the new contracts for the 81’s minesweeper. He wants to know why we would honor any contracts from a manufacturer that refuses to correct existing problems.” His voice escalated. She wondered if the aide could hear, or if he’d trained himself to know which of Hickman’s pronouncements to respond to.
Hickman’s thick salty eyebrows had narrowed into an angry scribble across his forehead. “This punk reporter’s asking why we haven’t grounded the entire fleet of 81s.” He leaned backward again, as if this time settling in for her reaction. She felt him study her face. His eyes glanced down her body so quickly and back to her face she wondered if she had imagined the movement.
“I’ll call headquarters’ PAO, sir, and notify them that Shapiro is on some sort of rogue investigation.”
He shook his head. “No, no. Don’t do that, Captain Anderson.” So it was back to Captain Anderson. “No point elevating someone like Shapiro to a higher level of significance. But I want him persona non grata on this base. Is that clear?”
He must have read her rising protest. “I don’t care what falls out of the sky over here, Captain Anderson. Paul Shapiro won’t be authorized clearance on this piece of government property. Not as long as I’m commanding general.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” She went to shift her weight on the sofa, to uncross and recross her legs, and discovered the back of a leg stuck to the leather. Rather than risk the awful sucking noise that would surely result from the pull-away, she resisted.
By the way his eyebrows soared upward, Hickman appeared to misinterpret her hesitation. “What—you don’t approve?”
“It’s not for me to approve or disapprove, sir.” When his face relaxed and the corners of his mouth lifted, she had to suppress a sigh of relief. The rest of what she had to say would require finesse. He needed to know what trap he was setting for himself with this action against Paul Shapiro. Her job was to offer him counsel, whether he wanted to hear it or not. “It’s just that the persona non grata status concerns me.”
His hands slowly folded into fists, taking on the shape of knobby lumps of coal. His body stiffened, and every pore seemed to ooze with indignation. However, to his credit, he answered with a remarkably restrained, “How so?”
“I’m afraid this will only fuel Paul Shapiro’s curiosity,” she said. “He’s the Current’s military beat reporter. If we deny him coverage of a major news event, it will … might … signal to the editor and publisher that we’re not being entirely forthcoming about everything.” She stopped and waited for the explosion. Instead, Hickman glanced out the window. She let her eyes follow his this time. Outside, two Marines were standing and talking in the parking lot. The windward breeze was apparently picking up, for both Marines simultaneously grabbed at their headgear. The American flag that a few moments earlier had been unfurled for the morning colors, ballooned, and then calmed into undulating folds. In the distance beyond the two Marines and the flagpole was the flight line. Quiet, for now.
Still staring out the window, Hickman said, “Maybe you’re right. I’m impressed. You’ve studied Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.”
Guessing what he meant, she said, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer?” He looked back at her, and they locked stares. When she read the hint of admiration in his expression, a swell of excitement began churning deep within her, and she hated herself for the effect he wielded on her. Was she that uncertain of herself, after all, that she needed, even craved, his approval?
“Okay,” he said, “let’s handle Shapiro on a case-by-case basis.”
“Aye-aye, sir.” She sensed the dismissal and reached for her notepad.
“I want to be kept informed,” he said. Hickman’s eyebrows narrowed. Whatever admiration she’d read was gone so quickly she had to wonder if she imagined it. “Any time you talk with Paul Shapiro, I want to know about it.”
Yeah, she thought, you and everybody else. She had to start a list. “Yes, sir.”
“He so much as calls for the correct spelling of a last name, I want to know about it.”
“Aye-aye, sir.”
He stood. She collected her purse and waited for the dismissal. Hickman crossed the office, stepped behind his desk, and turned his back to her to stare out the window.
“You’re dismissed, Captain Anderson.”
She quickly navigated through the plush carpet on the balls of her feet, lest her high heels dig in and cause her to trip.
CHAPTER 10
The next morning, a Saturday and exactly one week since Major White’s helicopter crash, Chase was standing on her back patio with a cup of steaming Kona coffee. She inhaled the aroma and gazed out past her backyard and down the steep, rocky cliff toward the Pacific. When a chilly breeze swept up the canyon, bringing with it the marshy smell of ocean life, she thought about rummaging through plastic totes at the back of Molly’s closet for sweaters.
Another breeze, and Chase cinched her robe a bit tighter. She considered returning inside for a heavier robe, but decided the coffee would eventually warm her. She wanted to enjoy the little quiet time she had left before Molly awoke. There was never enough alone time anymore, unless she was running.
Not that she was complaining … well, maybe just a little. But what right had she to complain after leaving Molly for a year and after the child had lost her father? Did anyone really know yet the significance of the separation and loss on Molly’s psyche? Only time would tell. What Chase knew for certain was that she never wanted to be separated from Molly again, even if it meant an early resignation from the Corps. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that. So far, aside from the year in Iraq they’d been lucky. But who could complain after the events of September 11? They were Marines, for crying out loud, living their lives on the altar of sacrifice. With the exception of that year and a few short training deployments, they had managed to stay together. She could thank the career planners at headquarters in DC for that.
She settled into a lawn chair and took a long sip of her coffee that had cooled too quickly. But she was already warming up against the windward breeze. The weather forecast for the day called for temps to reach the low eighties despite a chilly start. October in Hawaii. This was paradise. The hibiscus blossoms, like an assembly of giant, orange trumpets, looped around the chain link fence that divided her lawn from both neighbors. Same for the rainbow shower tree with its explosion of orange, red, and yellow flowers that her yard shared with Paige’s. Paige and her husband had a daughter, Sara, who was Molly’s age. The two girls had become close friends who ran in and out of each other’s homes. In fact, Molly was due for a sleepover that evening. Their friend, Erin, Samantha’s daughter, lived on the other side, and was joining the sleepover. Chase would have the entire evening to herself. What would she do with all that time? She considered renting a movie, or, better yet, going to a movie by herself. She used to do this before Molly was born whenever Stone had duty, but Stone thought it a little weird that someone would choose to go to a movie theater alone, and he’d expressed concern about her safety in a dark parking lot. Regardless, she preferred going it alone, though she would never tell him so. No one there to chatter in her ear for the missed line of dialogue that caused her to miss the next two or three. No one to rustle for popcorn at the most inopportune time of plot. Or, she could skip the
movie and go for Chinese take-out, and after egg rolls on the patio, soak in a bubble bath with a glass of wine. There was the half-finished Toni Morrison novel on her nightstand.
She pondered all the possibilities, but it was much too early in the day to make a decision. Too many choices could be as exasperating as none. She had all day to think about how she would spend her evening. She took another sip of coffee. The breeze was picking up. She had come to associate the rustling of palm fronds with the wonderfully slow, gentle island way of life. Two years from now, she would most likely be reassigned somewhere stateside. She stared at her ocean view, suddenly compelled to imprint everything about the blue placidity, the vibrancy of tall jungle palms swaying against the backdrop of blue sky and ocean. Nothing lasts forever, she told herself and thought about Kitty White, wondering how the widow was managing on her own with two children. She let her mind drift back to Stone. When she closed her eyes, she pictured the last time Stone had made love to her. It had been in the morning, just hours before his flight to Afghanistan. The lovemaking had been slow and passionate, almost desperate, she’d call it now, looking back. “Look at me, Chase,” he’d whispered, and when she’d opened her eyes, tears spilled over and into her hair. It had been the most present moment of lovemaking she’d ever experienced with Stone. Poor Kitty White could make love to whomever she wanted to from now on, Chase thought, but she would never open her eyes to find Tony looking back.
Tiny flashes of color to her left captured her attention. The previous base housing occupants where Samantha lived had installed a hummingbird feeder halfway between the patio and the kitchen. This morning, hummingbirds were darting in and out at all possible angles so quickly they were dazzling, dizzying blurs.
She heard a tap on the glass behind her. Molly, disheveled and still sleepy-eyed, peered through the glass. In her arms, her favorite pink teddy bear, given to her by Stone before his departure.
“Come on out, sweetheart.”
Molly used both hands to push open the sliding glass door. She was barefoot, her long brown hair a bird’s nest of fuzz. Chase set her coffee on the table and patted her lap.
“I’m cold, Mommy,” the little girl said as she climbed onto Chase’s lap. Chase unwrapped her robe and drew it around Molly’s tiny frame.
“Better?”
Molly nodded.
“It may be too chilly for a grass skirt on Halloween.”
Molly sat upright and shook her head. “Tights,” she said, and laid her head back against her mother’s chest. She was her father’s daughter, all right. She had an answer for everything.
After a pancake brunch at The Seahorse Café that overlooked the Kamehameha Highway and Kaneohe Bay, she and Molly set out to find a grass skirt. Luck was with them. In downtown Kaneohe, they located one at their first stop, which was a tiny Hawaiian-owned tourist shop. The woman who owned the shop was a large, beautiful Polynesian with a wide, bright smile, dressed in a blue and white floral muumuu, with a pink Hibiscus flower behind her left ear.
Molly declared, “I’m going to be a hula dancer for Halloween.”
The woman leaned closer to Molly. “But can you hula?”
Molly began to hula. The child bent her knees, rose onto the balls of her foot, and slowly swayed her arms and tiny hips.
The shop owner beamed. “Where did you learn the authentic hula? I’m a kuma hula instructor, and you honor my people.”
“I learned it at my school. Mrs. Kamaka says the hula tells stories.” Molly’s favorite story was about the night marchers near Sacred Falls. According to legend, the ghosts of Hawaiian chiefs and warriors were said to rise each night from their secret burial caves above the Kualoa Ranch in the Kaaawa Valley and march in a ghostly procession to the sea.
“Stories preserve our history,” the woman said to Molly. “Just like the hula.” She demonstrated the hula to Molly, and though the old woman was shapeless, she transformed into fluidity when she danced. Afterward, she said to Chase, “Some say we are one generation away from losing our native Hawaiians. I wanted my daughter to marry a native, but she said she could find no one.” Back to Molly, she said, “To be an authentic hula dancer, you need an authentic raffia skirt. Follow me.”
In the back of the shop, the woman wrapped several skirts around Molly’s waist before finding one that fit. “You’re so tiny,” she said each time a skirt didn’t work. Finally, they located one that wouldn’t slide down Molly’s hips when she walked. “Now, do you have a bathing suit top you can wear with this?”
Molly looked up at Chase who said, “What about your pink bathing suit top with the yellow flowers.” Molly nodded.
“That sounds beautiful,” the woman said and led a skirted Molly and her mother to the displays of multi-colored leis, draping her in fake lavender and white orchids. She led her to the full-length mirror. “You’ll make a very pretty hula dancer. Be sure your mother puts a flower behind your ear, like mine.” She bent to show Molly how she had it pinned. “Only you must wear your flower behind your right ear.”
“Why?”
“Because only married women wear flowers behind their left ears.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon running errands—a stop by the Koolau Nursery to buy nectar for the hummingbirds, a withdrawal for cash at the bank ATM, for Chase had decided she would go to a movie that night after all, and a grocery run for brownie mix Molly said she wanted to take to the sleep-over.
“Miss Paige promised to help us bake brownies,” Molly said, as they headed down the aisle of boxed cake mixes and canned frostings. Paige Abercrombie was the quintessential stay-at-home mom. Her home was decorated with the kind of Martha Stewart attention-to-detail that made women like Chase itch with self-doubt; itch from the awkward sense that at nearly thirty she was still trying to grow into who she thought she was supposed to be; itch from the even more awkward sense that for all these years as a Marine, even after all her accomplishments, Chase was still trying to be the woman, and mother, others thought her already to be.
That Paige would even allow a box of brownie mix in the house, rather than a Martha Stewart bake-from-scratch recipe, surprised and even amused Chase. She and Stone had always been fastidious about the cleanliness and orderliness of their home, she supposed from an orderly military life, but neither of them was particularly concerned with fashionable furniture over functional, let alone pricey over conservative. While they could afford better, newer, they didn’t buy into the act of spending to impress. On this matter, she and Stone were united.
Still, Chase couldn’t help but feel a twinge of uneasiness whenever she stepped inside Paige’s home of stylish furnishings. Paige was a year or so older than Chase, and the elegance of the woman’s home rubbed against Chase’s insecurities about whether she was honestly allowing herself to grow into womanhood. To Chase, however, Paige’s home screamed, trying too hard. It seemed to Chase too bold a statement about where Paige expected her husband to end up in a few years. If you were supposed to dress for the job you hoped to land, one day Paige Abercrombie had decorated her home as if she expected to land the general’s quarters.
Molly rang the doorbell. Sara, as blonde and fair as Molly was brunette and tanned, pulled open the door with breathless excitement. Paige, in a neatly fitted sundress and strappy flats, appeared in a cloud of gardenia. She draped a manicured hand across her daughter’s shoulder. “Aren’t you going to invite our guests in?”
Sara yanked Molly inside and the two girls dashed the length of the foyer and disappeared. Paige smiled. “Chase, please come in.”
“I can’t stay but a minute,” Chase said, then remembering she hadn’t a thank-you note for Paige, added, “The quiche and fruit were wonderful. I can’t thank you enough.”
Paige smiled again and led Chase through the vanilla-scented foyer and into the living room where several tea light candles flickered on bookshelves across the room. Candles were the last thing Chase would have put out during a sleepover with three five-y
ear-olds, but then Paige hadn’t put them out for the girls. The effect, though Chase hated to admit it, wasn’t lost on her. The atmosphere was undeniably charming, homey. Though the floor plan was identical to Chase’s and to every other house in their field-grade housing neighborhood, Chase had the feeling among Paige’s plush upholstered chairs and maple end tables, that one could believe the layout of this house to be different from all others, at least different from the one next door. On the square maple and glass tabletop was an expensive looking ceramic bowl that contained an assortment of yellow and orange gourds. Across the room, a lineup of ceramic pumpkins. Paige decorated for the seasons. The day after Thanksgiving, if she did as last year, she’d have her husband on the roof, hanging Christmas lights.
On the bar that separated Paige’s kitchen from the dinette area was a row of three carved pumpkins, all with happy faces. Nothing ghoulish for Paige.
She motioned to a chair.
“I can’t stay but a minute,” Chase said. “I’m going to a movie.”
“Alone? Is that safe?”
“You sound like Stone,” Chase said, and smiled. “Well, he used to say that all the time. He didn’t like me going alone. I think he sometimes forgot he was married to a Marine.” She regretted the latter statement, on two accounts. First, it was the first time since Stone’s death she’d said anything negative about her husband. Second, her comment was nothing short of an insecure way of reminding Paige that while she was Martha Stewart perfect, her imperfect neighbor next door had important duties that extended outside of base housing.
“It’s your own fault, you know—” Paige said, “you just don’t look like everyone’s image of a Marine.” Her sudden bright smile landed like a period at the end of her complimentary comeback. Even at small talk, Paige could be perfect. Their daughters’ high-pitched prattle and combustions of giggles from the other side of the house reached them. Paige looked as if she were about to call after the unladylike behavior when the doorbell rang. By the time she crossed the few feet to the foyer, Sara and Molly dashed ahead to reach the door. Chase heard Paige greet Samantha and her redheaded daughter, Erin. The three girls were a blur of energy as they raced through the living room past Chase and into the kitchen. She heard the refrigerator door open and cups fill with ice.
An Unlawful Order (The Chase Anderson Series) Page 12
